two countries that promised so much for Poland and performed so
little--England and France.

Cartoner sat on the vacant seat in his compartment, which had not been
made up as a bed, and listened thoughtfully to the pleasant tones. It
was broad daylight now, and the flat, carefully cultivated land was
green and fresh. Cartoner looked out of the window with an unseeing
eye, and the sleeping-carriage lumbered along in silence. The Englishman
seemed to have no desire for sleep, though, not being an impressionable
man, he was usually able to rest and work, fast and eat at such times
as might be convenient. He was considered by his friends to be a rather
cold, steady man, who concealed under an indifferent manner an almost
insatiable ambition. He certainly had given way to an entire absorption
in his profession, and in the dogged acquirement of one language after
another as occasion seemed to demand.

He had been, it was said, more than usually devoted to his profession,
even to the point of sacrificing friendships which, from a social and
possibly from an ambitious point of view, could not have failed to be
useful to him. Martin Bukaty was not the first man whom he had kept at
arm's-length. But in this instance the treatment had not been markedly
successful, and Cartoner was wondering now why the prince had been so
difficult to offend. He had refused the friendship, and the effect had
only been to bring the friend closer. Cartoner sat at the open window
until the sun rose and the fields were dotted here and there with the
figures of the red-clad peasant women working at the crops. At seven
o'clock he was still sitting there, and soon after Prince Martin
Bukaty, after knocking, drew back the sliding door and came into the
compartment, closing the door behind him.